The Climate Report #365 | Clean Vehicles, Dirty Extraction | 2-20-23

CLEAN VEHICLES, DIRTY EXTRACTION

North America could be a serious producer of lithium for electric vehicles. But at what cost?

Thacker Pass in Nevada is being asked to help produce minerals for “clean” vehicles, owing to the site’s rich deposits of lithium, a.k.a., “white gold.”

According to Wikipedia: “The Thacker Pass Lithium Mine is a proposed lithium … mining development project in Humboldt County, Nevada which is the largest known lithium deposit in the US, and one of the largest in the world.[5][6][7] The project site would cover 18,000 acres At full capacity it would produce 66,000 tons annually,[2][4][6] equivalent to 25% of the current (2021) demand for lithium globally.

According to The Guardian: “Across the global lithium frontier, from Chile to the western United States and Portugal, environmental activists, indigenous communities and residents concerned about the threats to agricultural livelihoods are protesting over what they see as the greenwashing of destructive mining. Indeed, natural resource sectors, which include extractive activities like mining, are responsible for 90% of biodiversity loss and more than half of carbon emissions. One report estimates that the mining sector produces 100bn tons of waste every year. Extraction and processing are typically water- and energy-intensive, and contaminate waterways and soil.”
(“The rush to ‘go electric’ comes with a hidden cost: destructive lithium mining” 6/14/21)

According to InsideClimate News: “The opponents view lithium extraction as the latest gold rush, and fear that the desperation to abate the climate crisis is driving a race into avoidable environmental degradation. The flawed assumption behind the “clean energy transition,” they argue, is that it can maintain levels of consumption that are inherently unsustainable.”
(“Plans To Dig the Biggest Lithium Mine in the US Face Mounting Opposition” 11-7-21)

In this episode, I explore this story.